In college football, you can't look back. And you can't look forward too much either.
Coming off a monumental victory, the top-ranked Eastern Washington University football team remains at home to face Montana Western on Saturday (Aug. 30) on Youth Football Day at Roos Field. Kickoff is 6:05 p.m. Pacific time versus the Bulldogs, a member of the NAIA and the Frontier Conference.
Down 21-14, Eastern out-scored No. 17 Sam Houston State 42-14 in the final 36 1/2 minutes to register a 56-35 win last Saturday in a matchup between two NCAA Football Championship Subdivision powerhouses. The "FCS Showcase" televised by ESPN.
The Bulldogs also played last week, and opened with a 38-6 league win over Montana Tech. The Bulldogs led at halftime 35-0 and out-gained the Orediggers 334-214 in total offense and won the turnover battle 4-0. A year ago, Montana Western was 4-6 with all of its games league counters.
Although a showdown with Pac-12 opponent Washington on Sept. 6 is ahead for the Eagles, they can't afford to look past this week's game. Eastern is 8-0 all-time versus Montana Western, and the Eagles have won their last five games versus lower-division foes dating back to 21-14 loss in 2006 to Central Washington.
"It's 11 college football players against 11 college football players and we are all looking to accomplish special things in a season and in every game," said Eastern head coach Beau Baldwin. "They are going to look at it no different than the way we looked at Oregon State a year ago and will look at Washington in two weeks. At the end of the day, its players fighting and scrapping, and they are there for a reason just like our players. They can football, and they looked very strong in their opening win on both sides of the ball. I don't care who you play, it's always going to be a challenge."
kalm wrote:
No shit. They certainly ain't no Oklahoma Panhandle.
I'm no fan of us playing games like that, but at least they were DII, not an NAIA team that hasn't even won its conference in...
DII and NAIA count equally as little. Not to mention, our OOC schedule is always top notch as of late, so I'm pretty sure UW, SHSU and MSU more than makeup for this home-slate filler game. It is what it is.
This game was pretty much a snoozer as many starters didn't even suit up. The best part of the entire thing was our 5th string RB hurdling two defenders.
